EXG Pro’s Alan Fenwick on the rise and rise of Cable Guys

Alan, it’s great to catch up. Let’s start at the beginning. How did you come to launch EXG Pro?
It was a series of what turned out to be happy accidents – a combination of luck and determination. I started off in retail and spent a long time at Woolworths. I ended up being approached by Warner Bros to join the consumer products team. I then ended up working for a new division of Warner that spanned all divisions, everything from theatrical to TV to the very early stages of digital and content distribution, as well as consumer products and home entertainment.

I did that for a number of years and then got approached by our sister company Turner and spent seven years there building a consumer products licensing team. It was the early days of a property called Ben 10 – we did 100 million toys!

Leaving Turner, I set up a number of companies and a lot of those were about being a consultancy solution for brand owners that wanted a TV contact, or scriptwriting doing, or to connect with somebody in the Middle East, or a factory solution… We brokered a number of deals over a period of time, and from that we saw a massive opportunity within gaming and collectables, targeting an older demographic.

And when was this Alan?
This was back in sort of 2016 – before people started talking about kidults! It was about seeing the white space and then creating a product that was going to meet that fan need. For most of the past six or seven years it’s been about fine tuning that. We knew that if we could get a product to be authentic and create a form factor that we could own – with a functionality that was unique – then we could have a design that wouldn’t need lots of churn. The first product we put out in 2017, based on Call of Duty, is still one of our bestsellers today.

Did you need to launch with a few brands for others to embrace what you were doing? Or was it quite straightforward to onboard licensors?
It was fast, furious and involved a heavy dose of luck. We had two brands that came on board really early. One was with Capcom and the other was with Activision with Call of Duty. And when we first approached the team at Call of Duty, they told us they only worked with established companies on product that already had some kind of traction… Our company was four months old with an idea nobody had ever thought of before – with no infrastructure to make it happen! Yet we managed to get a multi-national deal secured at that early stage.

How did you change their minds?
It was because a combination of relationships that we, the belief in this idea – and the fact we were prepared to put a MG down and effectively back it by saying: “We’ll put 100% of the MG upfront – trust us to deliver” Within six months we had a product to sell and we’d earnt out the MG in our first quarter. That gave us that early traction for people to say: ‘There’s something here’.

The very first Cable Guys product we launched sold out in a number of weeks in the five markets that we launched it with. Now we have a portfolio of over 200 brands, but each one is treated separately. We have to do that in order to get it right for the fans and be authentic. It’s why I think creativity and design is so important… Out of a team of 30 people, the majority of them work in creative… I think we have more videographers and graphic designers than we do salespeople! It’s because connecting with that fan group is so important.

I’ve said to your team before that Cable Guys probably don’t get the credit they deserve in terms of design, because they have to serve a function, look terrific and be authentic to the brands they represent. That’s quite a few plates to spin!
When you approach a challenge like a design problem – rather than ‘how quickly can we get this product onto shelves’ – it means that you start to notice subtle differences that have a big impact…

The form factor has to stand the test of time… The product is going to be holding a device – a phone or a controller – probably for the next 10, maybe 20 years. How do you build a product that can withstand heat and weight? If you knock it, the device shouldn’t fall out…

Then there’s the aesthetics – it’s got to look like the character! And because of the form factor, we’ve made the character’s heads a bit bigger so you can see more of the face when they’re holding a device. The arms are a bit longer, so that whatever controller or phone goes into that, it will hold it level… The legs are bent and the back is slightly bent back for stability.

Then it’s about what makes that character unique and different? What would make a fan say: “That’s cool”? It comes back to these being functional first collectables.

How would you describe the creative culture at EXG Pro?
Our role across the leadership team is to have the right people and get out of their way; letting them develop and grow. That approach has led us to some incredible new products and directions. And every single person in the business – whether they think they’re creative or not – is adding something to that mix.

We’re also focused on sustainability through design, not through just the material it’s made of. If we’re making a product, it needs to last for the next 20 or 30 years. And when it’s handed down, it still has to be useful, authentic and relevant to that person.

In terms of the brands you work with, how do you balance collaborating with established IP with taking swings on ‘the next big thing’?
The people that work for us are all passionate about brands; they all have their own communities and fanbases they engage with. Some are into horror, some are into anime… For others, its gaming, film or TV. They’re all passionate and that passion can guide us.

Equally, it could be that a brand-new IP resonates. That sort of opportunity takes a little bit longer for us to evaluate because we say “no” more than we say “yes” to brands. It’s not because we don’t value those brands, it’s usually down to that fact we haven’t been able to find a connection yet with the fanbase.

What’s the key to successful creative collaborations between licensees and licensors?
It’s about being authentic. There’s a difference sitting in front of a brand because you feel you have to – and just want that license before somebody else does it – and engaging with a brand from a fan’s perspective. How we possibly develop a product aimed at fans if we’re not fans ourselves? It comes down to being authentic.

Away from Cable Guys, I know you’ve launched many different ranges over the years. Are there any you feel were perhaps underrated? We can give them some love here!
Two come to mind, and I killed them for different reasons!

Ha! I’m intrigued!
One was a brand called Meta Mugs. The idea was to treat a mug like an action figure… So the handle of the mug would be shaped like the arm of a character. The body was 360 degree decal – so the decal went under the arm… There’s only two companies in the world that tried that. And then you’re hand making these things in China, so not easy!

Not easy – but they look great!
We sold hundreds of thousands of these things; they were really super cool. And the brand owners loved them!

Which begs the question, why drop Meta Mugs!?
I’m just not a mug guy! And actually, it didn’t matter whether I loved them or not, I was never going to be able to take on the experts in this space. It was a case of it being a passion project rather than a commercial venture. There are 50 other companies out there that will do this better than me, so it wasn’t something we should spend time on.

Fair enough! And your second pick?
The second one is a brand called Big Box. The inspiration came from Loot Crate; those big subscription boxes. Nobody was really doing them at retail. So we came up with a brand called Big Box. Everything was designed and curated, but the problem was that we ended up working with seven or eight different factories, all creating items for a product that was then assembled in a different factory, put into a box and shipped in time for day one of a game’s release… I couldn’t make any money on it! We did millions of dollars of business with it in the early days – it was almost half of our business at one point… Half Cable Guys, half Big Box.

But still too expensive to produce?
I couldn’t find a simpler way of engineering it. We have a cookie cutter approach and so it ate up all of our design resources. The margins were too tight and there were too many things that could go wrong with it, so I didn’t like that model. I loved the product, I loved the concept and retail loved it – they made loads of money! We tried it for 18 months, but I needed to move the business on.

Before we wrap up, going back to the enormous success of Cable Guys – why do you feel this line continues to resonate so strongly with fans?
The early success had its roots in collectables doing well, gaming doing incredibly well and I remember an early ‘Duh!’ moment that proved integral… We created the first ones to hold controllers, but a fan sent us a video of their Cable Guy holding a phone… It holds phones! We hadn’t thought of that! We quickly pivoted, added some more entertainment brands and suddenly you can put your phone on it.

That was important because now people were putting their phones on Cable Guys and watching content on their phones… There’s something about watching content on a screen being held by the character whose content you’re watching… That’s something the fans love.

And there’s plenty of uses we hadn’t considered… I don’t know if you saw the recent Deadpool video with Gordon Ramsay, but that was cool because the Deadpool Cable Guy is holding a bottle of hot sauce bottle! We’ve seen them hold pens, watches… Ultimately, they do something useful and look great.

Absolutely. I have one last question Alan – how do you have ideas? What fuels your creativity?
The thing that drives me has been the thing that’s driven me for years – a sense of continuous improvement and not standing still. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and I think I’ve just had the best idea. Or I’ll see a macro trend that’s inspiring.

Look at what we’re doing now in audio. There was a whitespace there for us to introduce our mix of collectability and functionality… Adding innovation to a product which is probably suffering under a bit of label slapping at the moment. We launched Holdems earlier this year and they can hold ear pods.

We then launched Buds Pro Bundles which is a bit different too and builds on what we’ve done so far… And that will be innovated on further next year and taken to the next level. So innovation is a big driver of creativity for us.

Great stuff. Thanks again Alan.